weakness

Aphorisms XXIII

Fine, but if you put all your eggs in one basket, you’d better not drop that basket.

*

So often in anxious times you see your own internal features expressed in silences, gaps and tones in the speech of your friends. Your own face glares back out of them darkly and says, you’re not enough, you are guilty. But, as it often turns out, they never meant anything by it.

I long for the truth of a myth of a messianic moment where understanding passes over us in a sweet rapture. But it won’t.

The most we can hope for is to taste it, from time to time.

*

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Moana

In looking for happiness right where you are
or farthest-star following –
what if you find that happiness requires
the acquisition of skeletons?
What if the last leap turns into a fall?

And you hit the golden rocks by the sea
or are dragged down into it
by the weight of all these childish things.
What if to be happy, you must
take someone else’s happiness without hesitation?

What if I am not strong enough to harm
in the end the one whom I love
who is stopping me from being happy?
No new island without castaways;
Oh I know who I am, And I hope it’s good!

V.67 Fainting at the Supermarket Clinic

When I was lying amongst them –
the tubs of biochemical
waste – I had a thought, on the floor
there, under the bright yellow tubs

I cried later, the self-service
checkout beeped and I cried weakly
Julian of Norwich touched me
on the shoulder. She hugged me and

I cried at the gap. The quiet
where visions should have poured outward
was a small cracked rock in the dark.
The Wu tang Clan sung me back with

C.R.E.A.M. as my selfhood rebooted.
My heartbeat was slow, I was born
again, from a song I can’t know.
I thought: what has happened? I know

nothing anymore, just this face
and the other, staring back down
as I lay on the smooth cold floor.
The lady passed by, I sat up

and stood up, slowly. I wandered
from here to there, bought frozen food
and went to the checkout. She had
hollow eyes and she hugged me close